Department of Health and Social Care

Epilepsy: Medical Treatments

David Warburton: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to support children with intractable epilepsy until medical cannabis becomes readily available on NHS prescription.

Jo Churchill: Since January 2020, the Refractory Epilepsy Specialist Clinical Advisory Service has been in place to provide advice and support for doctors in tertiary neuroscience centres, including specialised paediatric neuroscience centres, to optimise the treatment of refractory epilepsy. In September 2019, the cannabis-based medicine Epidyolex was granted a marketing authorisation or licence by the European Medicines Agency, following an assessment of its quality, safety and efficacy. Epidyolex is available on the National Health Service for the treatment of two rare forms of refractory epilepsies in children and adults.However, guidelines published by the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence demonstrate a clear need for more evidence to support routine prescribing and funding decisions for unlicensed cannabis-based products for the treatment of refractory epilepsy and other conditions. To help improve the evidence base, the National Institute for Health Research is working with NHS England and clinicians to develop a programme of two clinical trials into refractory epilepsy.

General Practitioners: Females

Mr Barry Sheerman: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to ensure that female GPs remain within the profession.

Jo Churchill: Through our suite of retention schemes, we are encouraging general practitioners (GPs) to stay in the workforce for longer by addressing the reasons why doctors leave the profession and encouraging them to return to practice. Although these are open to all GPs, those aimed at encouraging better flexible working may be particularly beneficial for female GPs who might be more at risk of leaving the profession due to caring responsibilities.Funding and support has also been made available for local Primary Care Flexible Staff Pools, to increase capacity in general practice and create a new offer for local GPs wanting to work flexibly. For GPs, pools can offer access to the flexibility of a locuming role and connections to work opportunities with increased job security and the benefits of a salaried position.

Asthma: Drugs

Yvonne Fovargue: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what has been the effect of home delivery of biologic medication for asthma patients on patient outcomes.

Jo Churchill: No specific assessment has been made of the effect of home delivery of asthma biologic medication on patient outcomes.

Primary Health Care

Sir George Howarth: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 7 July 2021 to Question 23077 on Primary health care, what estimate his Department has made of the number of referrals from the NHS 111 referral service to community pharmacy for self-treatable conditions in each month since November 2020.

Jo Churchill: The following table shows the number of referrals to the Community Pharmacist Consultation Scheme (CPCS) from NHS 111 for minor illnesses in each month since November 2020:MonthNHS 111 minor illness CPCS referralsNovember 202022,165December 202020,063January 202123,600February 202119,475March 202124,574April 202129,250May 202137,390June 202129,448

Pharmacy: Medical Records

Feryal Clark: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what consideration he has made of the potential merits of pharmacists being given read and write access to medical records.

Jo Churchill: The Department, NHS England and NHS Improvement, NHSX and NHS Digital are progressing interoperability of systems to achieve this access. In some areas, medical records are already shared between medical professionals to support locally commissioned services.

Dental Services: Tower Hamlets

Apsana Begum: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the number of (a) children and young people under 18 and (b) adults waiting for an NHS dentist in Tower Hamlets.

Jo Churchill: No waiting list data is held centrally on adults or children wishing to access National Health Service (NHS) dental services in Tower Hamlets, or in London. Patients are not required to register with a dental practice to access NHS services.

Coronavirus: Quarantine

Mr Tanmanjeet Singh Dhesi: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answers of 27 May 2021 to Question 3112 on Coronavirus: Quarantine and of 19 July 2021 to Question 1182 on Travel: Coronavirus, what steps the Managed Quarantine Service takes to (a) identify and (b) deal with urgent cases.

Jo Churchill: The Managed Quarantine Service processes applications in order of receipt and prioritises based on the proposed date of travel. Requests for exemptions are identified and prioritised in the same way. The target for the consideration of applications is 14 days.

Coronavirus: Screening

Preet Kaur Gill: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will publish (a) the design, (b) methodology, (c) selection and eligibility criteria and (d) early data from the daily testing pilot as of 18 July 2021.

Jo Churchill: Organisations participating in the workplace daily contact testing pilot were selected because they had expressed an interest in joining the pilot and already had an asymptomatic test site in the workplace. The workplaces selected were also designed to ensure a spread of different types of organisation, including additional public sector organisations, to assess the operational implications of running daily contact testing.To be eligible to take part in the workplace daily contact testing pilot, people working at the selected workplaces who were identified as a contact of someone with COVID-19 had to:- have no COVID-19 symptoms;- give their informed consent to taking part;- not live with anyone who has COVID-19 or symptoms;- not live in Scotland or Northern Ireland;- not travel in or out of Scotland or Northern Ireland while taking part in daily contact testing for work or personal reasons;- commit to test for at least 5 of the 7 scheduled days.A document setting out details of the pilot design, including the selection and eligibility criteria, is currently under review prior to publication. The pilot was designed to evaluate the operational feasibility of on-site daily contact testing in workplaces; it was not a research study and did not, therefore, follow a specific methodology. Data from the pilot will not be published as it is not validated.

Dental Services: Cancer

Gavin Robinson: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of making dental care free for cancer patients.

Andrew Rosindell: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether his Department has made an assessment of the potential merits of providing free dental care for people with cancer through the NHS.

Jo Churchill: No recent assessment has been made. People with cancer are able to apply for help with National Health Service dental charges on a range of grounds, including partial help through the NHS Low Income Scheme. Nearly half of all NHS dental patients, approximately 17.7 million people, were treated free of charge in the 2019/20 financial year.

Hepatitis: Disease Control

Mr Virendra Sharma: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what annual budget has been allocated by his Department to the elimination of Hepatitis C in each of the last five years; how much of that budget has been used since the commencement of the NHSE Hepatitis C elimination tender; and whether NHS England plans to ringfence that same amount of funding over the next four years to ensure elimination of that disease by 2025 in England.

Jo Churchill: NHS England and NHS Improvement's national hepatitis C elimination programme’s total annual elimination initiative’s expenditure, for which information is available, is as follows:- 2021/22 - £20 million (budgeted);- 2020/21 - £15 million; and- 2019/20 - £9 million.Prior to 2019/20, there was no dedicated elimination initiative funding. Regions were funded based on expenditure incurred by their providers and allocated on a monthly basis. NHS England and NHS Improvement have confirmed the budget provided each year has allowed the needs of the elimination programme to be fully met and expects the required budget to be made available for the duration of the programme.

Hepatitis

Mr Virendra Sharma: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much (a) his Department and (b) NHS England has spent on Hepatitis C (i) medicines and (ii) elimination activities since the start of the NHS England Hepatitis C elimination tender in May 2019.

Jo Churchill: NHS England and NHS Improvement allocate funding to the hepatitis C elimination programme. Since May 2019, NHS England and NHS Improvement have spent £63 million in both 2019/20 and 2020/21 on medicines.Since the strategic procurement was awarded in 2019/20, NHS England and NHS Improvement have spent £9 million in 2019/20 and £15 million in 2020/21 on elimination initiative costs.

Hepatitis: Drugs

Mr Virendra Sharma: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much his Department has spent on Hepatitis C medicines in each of the last four years.

Jo Churchill: NHS England and NHS Improvement’s spending is as follows:- 2020/21 - £63 million;- 2019/20 - £63 million;- 2018/19 - £86 million; and- 2017/18 - £260 million.The figure for 2017/18 pre-dates NHS England’s hepatitis C elimination tender in 2019.

Serco

Jon Trickett: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made for the total value of payments made to Serco since 2010, and for each of the last 10 years.

Jo Churchill: The information requested is shown in the following table. Information on contracts prior to 2013 is not held.YearSpend2013£2,743,517.422014£3,402,281.392015£3,121,526.812016£3,031,625.622017£2,851,597.062018£2,682,365.882019£2,980,613.292020£315,880,420.152021 (to date)£387,175,504.49Total£723,869,452.11

Long Covid

Layla Moran: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will make an assessment of the potential effect of the Government's decision to ease covid-19 restrictions on 19 July 2021 on the projected number of long covid cases in the next 12 months; and if he will make a statement.

Jo Churchill: ‘Long’ COVID-19 is a new condition that is not yet fully understood. We are working to develop our understanding, including the numbers of people being affected, the duration of symptoms and methods of reporting.

Borderline Substances Advisory Committee

Alex Norris: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to help ensure that the (a) schedules of meetings, (b) meeting agendas and (c) meeting minutes of the Advisory Committee on Borderline Substances are published on time.

Jo Churchill: The dates of Advisory Committee on Borderline Substances (ACBS) meetings are published on time on the Government website. The agendas of ACBS meetings are themselves not published and we are not taking steps to publish them.However, agendas are included in the minutes of each meeting, and the minutes of ACBS meetings are published on time at the following link:https://m.box.com/shared_item/https%3A%2F%2Fapp.box.com%2Fs%2Fk8a2gxf6b8emexz6neekq134yx9vi35y

Medical Treatments

Alex Norris: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps his Department is taking to ensure that the outcomes of the Innovative Medicines Fund and NICE Methods Review will align due to the fact that the timescale for the consultation processes will complete at a similar time.

Jo Churchill: The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) and NHS England and NHS Improvement are developing proposals for the Innovative Medicines Fund. NHS England and NHS Improvement announced the size of the fund on 21 July and an engagement exercise with stakeholders on detailed proposals is expected in the coming weeks.NICE also expects to consult on proposed changes to its programme manual in the summer as part of its ongoing methods and process review. NICE, NHS England and NHS Improvement will ensure that the outcomes of these processes support early patient access to the most promising new treatments.

Primary Health Care: Buildings

Royston Smith: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, whether he has made an assessment of the potential merits of introducing a ring-fenced revenue commitment in the NHS budget for primary care estate rental costs for the purposes of unlocking private sector investment in developing modern purpose-built primary care buildings.

Jo Churchill: No such assessment has been made. NHS England and NHS Improvement have an existing revenue budget for general practice premise reimbursements. Currently, general practitioner (GP) contractors are eligible for rental reimbursements. The type of reimbursement applicable depends on who owns the building, and entitlements are set out in The National Health Service (General Medical Services - Premises Costs) Directions 2013. Where GPs are tenants in a building owned by a National Health Service landlord or a private owner, they receive leasehold cost reimbursements.

Adrenaline

Rachael Maskell: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much NHS patients who were ineligible for free prescriptions spent on adrenaline in each of the last five years.

Jo Churchill: The following table shows the total prescription charges paid by patients in England in respect of adrenaline in each of the last five calendar years. This data only covers the prescription charge paid by the patient at the point of dispensing in the community and excludes prescriptions exempt from charges, and prescriptions dispensed to individuals holding Pre-Payment Certificates.Calendar YearTotal prescription charges2016£427,271.852017£475,021.602018£499,524.402019£567,453.002020£512,492.65

Coronavirus

Mr Steve Baker: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, if he will publish the data collected on the dashboard developed by Public Health England for purposes of (a) identifying and (b) monitoring trends in Trust-level hospital onset cases of covid-19 in patients; and if he will make a statement.

Jo Churchill: The National Health Service publish weekly reports by trust on the number of hospitalised patients with COVID-19, including those on mechanical ventilation; the number of patients admitted to hospital with COVID-19; and the number of patients diagnosed in hospital with COVID-19. These reports are available at the following link:https://www.england.nhs.uk/statistics/statistical-work-areas/covid-19-hospital-activity/In addition, national and regional data on the daily number of hospitalisations, new admissions and inpatient cases and patients on mechanical ventilation is available at the following link:https://coronavirus.data.gov.uk/details/healthcare

General Practitioners

Daisy Cooper: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what representations he has received from General Practitioners on their assessment of additional financial assistance required by GPs to meet patient demand for face-to-face GP appointments.

Jo Churchill: Departmental ministers have met regularly with general practitioner (GP) stakeholders, including the Royal College of General Practitioners and the British Medical Association, throughout the pandemic to discuss the pressures on general practice and any additional support, including financial support, that general practice may require from the Government and NHS England and NHS Improvement to ensure patients have timely and clinically appropriate access to GP services, whether face to face or remotely.To ensure general practice can continue to provide the necessary care for all patients during this busy time, we have made available an additional £270 million from November 2020 until September 2021. The fund is ringfenced exclusively for use in general practice, to support priorities including increasing GP numbers and capacity, and continuing to make inroads into any backlog of appointments including for chronic disease management and routine vaccinations and immunisations. GPs in England are eligible to use the PPE Portal to order COVID-19 PPE, free of charge, to meet the increased need arising from the COVID-19 pandemic.NHS England and NHS Improvement have provided guidance to general practice throughout the pandemic. On 19 July, it wrote to general practices, reiterating that GP contractors should continue to offer a blended approach of face-to-face and remote appointments, with digital assessment of patient care needs where possible.In June 2021, over half of all appointments (excluding vaccination appointments) were face to face (56.3%).

Food: Advertising

Andrew Rosindell: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, pursuant to the Answer of 7 July 2021 to Question 24116 on Food: Advertising, for what reasons no impact assessment has been undertaken by his Department; and what representations his Department has received from representatives of UK-based food and drink businesses on the potential effect on the competitiveness of the UK food and drink market of the introduction of further restrictions on the promotions and placements of products that are high in fat, salt and sugar; and if he will make a statement.

Jo Churchill: The impact assessment addresses a number of areas where the relationship between businesses, their success and the policy are relevant. Where evidence permits and it is proportional to do so, the effects on the competitive environment for English businesses are assessed. Such impacts on business are a key element independently scrutinised by the Regulatory Policy Committee, who rated the impact assessment fit for purpose.We have also engaged with a wide range of stakeholders and these views were considered as part of the development process of the impact assessment.The information requested on representations from the food and drink industry is not available in the format requested. A search of the Department’s document management and storage system identified over 3,000 items since the policy was proposed. To identify the specific number of such representations would incur disproportionate cost.

Dental Services: Manchester Gorton

Afzal Khan: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what estimate he has made of the number of (a) children and (b) adults on the waiting list for an NHS dentist in Manchester, Gorton consistency.

Afzal Khan: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what steps he is taking to reduce waiting lists for NHS dentists in Manchester, Gorton consistency.

Jo Churchill: Waiting list data is not held centrally.NHS England and NHS Improvement have established a ‘child friendly dental practice’ in Manchester to provide enhanced services for children, with reduced waiting times. Since starting in December 2020, the practice has treated over 360 children. The Greater Manchester Urgent Dental Service provides additional appointments across 10 localities in Greater Manchester for those who require urgent dental treatment. This is in addition to the 15 urgent dental care hubs set up in response to the pandemic which remain open to support urgent dental care provision across Manchester. A task and finish group are currently reviewing local capacity and demand for National Health Service dental services across Greater Manchester.

Coronavirus: Death

Mr Steve Baker: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what his Department's most recent estimate is of the covid-19 infection fatality rate.

Jo Churchill: As of 15 July, Public Health England’s modelling group, with the MRC Biostats Unit, estimated that overall infection mortality rate is approximately 0.096%.

Coronavirus: Ventilation

Jonathan Ashworth: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what research his Department has commissioned into the effect of ventilation systems in reducing the spread of covid-19.

Jonathan Ashworth: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, how much funding his Department has committed for research into the effect of ventilation systems in reducing the spread of covid-19 since the start of the covid-19 pandemic.

Jo Churchill: Public Health England (PHE) has not commissioned or committed funding to specific research into the effect of ventilation systems in reducing the spread of COVID-19. However, PHE has published guidance on the ventilation of indoor spaces to prevent the spread of the virus, which is available at the following link:https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/covid-19-ventilation-of-indoor-spaces-to-stop-the-spread-of-coronavirus/ventilation-of-indoor-spaces-to-stop-the-spread-of-coronavirus-covid-19

Coronavirus: Vaccination

Jess Phillips: To ask the Secretary of State for Health and Social Care, what his plans are to ensure the future protection for immunocompromised or immunosuppressed groups who are potentially at greater risk from covid-19 than the general population after the rollout of the vaccine.

Jo Churchill: Immunocompromised individuals are a priority cohort for research into therapeutic and prophylaxis treatments, such as monoclonal antibody therapies and repurposed compounds. The new Antivirals Taskforce is also identifying effective treatments for patients who have been exposed to the virus to prevent the spread of infection spreading and accelerate recovery time. The National Health Service is also developing plans to deploy monoclonal antibody therapies if these become available.We are ensuring the supply of these treatments in the event that they are found to be effective at treating COVID-19, including for immunocompromised individuals.Until these treatments are available, patients with immunosuppression are advised to continue to follow advice to reduce their chance of exposure.